It’s a Monday evening and the 2021/22 football season has just finished. I’m sat at the back of a hall waiting for other members of our community choir to arrive for a practice. Last to enter, and to complete our half-dozen blokes bass section, is Alan. Chirpy as ever, he’s dressed in a very striking…
There was a time (well before the advent of the internet) when newspapers traditionally published football league tables after the first three games. Not any more! Hype, micro-coverage and the speed of information gathering-and-giving have combined to make us hunger (apparently!) for measurements of success and failure even before some teams have kicked a ball….
Think Robbie Burns and you’d be forgiven for bringing to mind ‘Auld lang syne’ but there are plenty of other fine lines written by the great Scottish poet. “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men, Gang aft agley.” (Things often go wrong.) Sound familiar? These days, most of us come across that quote via…
It’s summer and it’ll soon be the start of a particularly weird football season. I don’t mean the fact that Forest finally find themselves back in the top flight (yes, come on you Reds!) but that, come November, the juggernaut of domestic fixtures will come to a shuddering stop. Everywhere. All over the globe. Reason?…
Little did I know, when I began writing this column back in March, that I’d be penning a line with ‘Forest’ and ‘Premiership’ in the same sentence! And that play-off win against Huddersfield is enough to have any Reds supporter burst into song. They were already in fine voice when colonising Wembley on Sunday with…
It’s late on a Friday evening in March when I turn off the A1 for Nottingham and lose control of my car. A spin, a bump up the curb and I come to a stop. Snow has been with me from Cambridge – where I live and stayed at work too long – and it’s…
Biggest smile on the face of a professional footballer this season? Christian Eriksen. Has to be, even before players and teams have scoped up all their medals and trophies. The occasion? Captaining Denmark and scoring a goal in their 3-0 win over Serbia at Copenhagen’s Parken stadium in March 2022, a year after he suffered…
The most famous triangle in the world – in popular culture at least – is probably the Bermuda Triangle. It’s an Atlantic ocean area where ships and aircraft have disappeared without trace, where signals have suddenly ceased, where lives have been lost and remain unaccounted for. The Trent Triangle would not match Bermuda for turning…
I do like to be beside the seaside, especially if it coincides with a Forest 4-1 win such as against Blackpool, as happened not so long ago! Now there’s another chance for Forest fans to take the bracing sea air. Change compass direction and work east along the south-coast. Plymouth, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Brighton have…
A metal bolt bounced off the head of the lad next to me. Then a couple of half-bricks came down, followed by showers of stones like shrapnel. Welcome to Swansea! A bunch of kids had obviously taken a dislike to us walking their streets and, perched on a wall up the hill, decided we were…
When I first see Jim Baxter in a Forest shirt at the City Ground, I know something isn’t quite right but the sight of him still takes my breath away. I’d feasted on photos, reports and profiles of him in my football magazines and annuals for years. He’d starred at Rangers and for Scotland when…
Forest are currently third in the Championship. I love league tables. Let me rephrase that. I love football league tables (as opposed to those devised by politicians to spread the fallacy that ‘performance’ in education, health and much else can be quantified in such terms alone). They crystallise the competitive essence of professional sport. There’s…
As Easter approaches each season, clubs line up their sights to assess what might be achieved and what must be avoided. Poet TS Eliot called April ‘the cruellest month’ and with good reason. Fickle weather, from snow to warm sunny days, come and go. In the world of football, games come thick and fast through…
Bill Shankly, legendary Liverpool manager (1959-74) once famously said – half-jokingly – ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that’. I’m not sure I’d go that far but there’s certainly a lot to be said for the relationship between football (or any other…
Reasons to be proud of a place are many and varied. A successful football club – on current form think Liverpool, Manchester City and United – brings kudos to a city. Long-established industries (now known as ‘heritage’!) who once exported their produce around the world would pride themselves on reputation and renown. We still associate…
I might get a discount when I go for a haircut next week. I might leave my visit a while longer, depending on Sunday’s outcome, or I could end up with a style I hadn’t asked for or a scissor nick – ‘sorry sir’ – to the neck. The young barber who sometimes cuts my…
The goal-keeper. First on the team-sheet, not always the first name in the memory bank of past players, whether match savers or losers. And they are set apart from their team-mates in so many ways. Are keepers born or do they evolve or happen by accident? Different skills, different kit (even when they could only…
Once you’re hitched-up with the club you support, life gets peopled with players you’ve never met who become as familiar as family. We all have our favourites, past and present, and for a multitude of reasons. Support Forest and you’re spoilt for choice! There’s an extensive gallery of local heroes to choose from and early-days…
A very old football gag goes: ’In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Forest.’ (Substitute teams are available!) Without wishing to steal the thunder of the Bible, there is something profound about becoming a football supporter. Whenever you declare your kinship with a team, it’s likely to stay with you for life….
Our newest (but oldest) reporter, Stephen Parker takes a look at Nottingham Forest’s recent fixture and compares with the great statues of the city, along with the toppling of Bristol’s own, Saturday gone was a day that went the way of Garibaldi Red, as the Forest troops sent the Robin’s packing back down to the…
